1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a garment hanger. More precisely, the present invention relates to an adjustable garment hanger that has movable shoulder members that tilt, slide inward or outward, and are locked in place by pushbutton control.
2. Description of Related Art
There have been many attempts at designing a hanger that is suitable for use with a variety of garments. This is a complicated task considering that garments come in a variety of shapes, fabrics, weights, sizes, etc. The wrong type of hanger for a certain garment may very well damage the appearance of the garment, if not shorten the life of the garment due to wrinkles, improper airing, stretching, distortion, or the like.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,620,102 to F. H. Bremer attempted to address some of those issues by providing a garment hanger with shoulder pieces that extend outward to make the hanger wider. The Bremer hanger, as were most hangers of that era, was made of solid wood.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,817,471 to L. R. Stoschy discloses a wooden hanger that has outward extending members at the outer tips of the hanger frame. The Stoschy hanger further has downward sloping shoulder bars that are hinged in the middle to adjust the angle of the shoulder area.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,525,142 to A. Levinson discloses a garment hanger with movable and adjustable shoulder pieces to accommodate coats, jackets and the like of different widths. The Levinson hanger has complicated hardware insofar as the movable shoulder pieces slide within dovetail tracks on the main part of the frame and are locked into place by screws.
The foregoing designs were directed to wooden garment hangers. There have also been developments in the area of wire garment hangers. Compared to wood hangers, wire hangers were very inexpensive to fabricate and so if cost was a concern, many businesses opted for wire hangers instead of wooden hangers.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,360,119 to Gallagher discloses a wire hanger having tubing that covers the outer extremes of the hanger, which tubing can adjust outward to increase the width of the hanger to accommodate different articles of clothing. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 3,005,579 to Thurber discloses an adjustable coat hanger primarily made of metal wire with shoulder pieces that slide along the shoulder portion of the wire frame.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,039,662 to Strong discloses an attachment for a garment hanger. The attachment is a shoulder piece that attaches to the wire or rigid hanger by friction fit; the shoulder piece slides up and down the sloped shoulder portion of the hanger. This action adjusts the hanger to various widths.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,491,836 to E. W. Simmet discloses an adjustable clothes hanger having a wire frame that has a substantially triangular shape. In this device, the ends of the frame telescope outward to adapt the hanger to larger size clothing.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,596,576 to MacSpadden, 2,709,026 to MacKenzie, and 2,820,583 to Mills all disclose adjustable shoulder pieces that add on to a wire frame. The shoulder pieces provide more support for the garment and can be adjusted to change the width of the wire frame hanger.
Although wire hangers are inexpensive to fabricate, they are typically very flimsy and cannot support the weight of a heavy coat, for example, without collapsing. Furthermore, the friction based adjustment in the foregoing hangers oftentimes move unintentionally. Accordingly, there have been improvements to find a more rigid hanger that nevertheless has adjustable features.
For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 2,900,117 to D. Veltry discloses an adjustable garment hanger wherein movable shoulder members slide along the shoulder portion of the frame and lock into place by use of a spring-loaded, hinged finger that engage notches spaced apart along the shoulder area of the frame.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,905,877 to Gatling discloses an adjustable garment hanger having a pair of oppositely extending arms engaged within a pair of auxiliary sleeves which may be adjusted to provide hanger arms of variable lengths. The sleeves slide in and out along the arms while a detent inside the sleeves engage a plurality of notches thereby setting the relative position of the sleeve.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,981,242 to Grahm discloses a clothes hanger assembly that has a tubular center segment through which a deformable wire extends. The exposed ends of the wire are inserted into tubular foam rubber sleeves which are then compressed by end pieces threaded onto the wire ends. Rotating the end pieces advances or unscrews the end piece on the threaded center wire thereby adjusting the overall width of the hanger. U.S. Pat. No. 3,549,063 to R. W. Campbell shows an adjustable garment hanger having sliding shoulder pieces that lock into place by tightening wing nuts.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,895,283 to L. W. Evangelist et at. discloses an adjustable garment hanger having notches spaced apart along the upper portion of the shoulders of the hanger, wherein shoulder extensions hook into the notches in order to adjust the hanger for various shoulder widths. Operating on a similar principle, U.S. Pat. No. 2,652,958 to R. E. Alvord discloses an adjustable garment hanger comprised of a frame with small openings spaced apart along the top of the shoulder area, and shoulder pieces with downward extending plugs or buttons that slide into the openings to lock the two structures together. The shoulder pieces then can be extended outward or retracted inward by relocating the plug.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,494,711 to H. Kusher et al. discloses a garment hanger having sleeves that slide over the shoulder portions of the curved frame. A horizontally oriented locating pin inside the sleeve engages a long row of detents formed by ridges and grooves on the frame. The friction generated between the pin and detents holds the sleeves at the desired width.
Unfortunately, all of the foregoing devices are rather complicated in structure, or lack strength, or both. Indeed, many prior art hangers are too flimsy to support heavy-weight fabric garments such as a winter overcoat. Moreover, the mechanisms used to achieve adjustability are not sufficiently strong to support the weight of a heavy coat, and the adjustments tend to slip out of their intended positions. Some of the conventional hangers that do have stronger frames unfortunately use very complicated mechanical parts to interlock the adjustable or movable members. This significantly increases the cost of fabrication of the hanger.
To be sure, cost of a hanger is often a major consideration. Although modem technology has produced hangers made of plastic instead of wire or wood to minimize costs, the finished product is still flimsy and typically has no adjustable features.
For example, most conventional plastic hangers have a simple triangular frame depending from a hook. The hanger usually has a simple circular cross-sectional shape to keep tooling and fabrication costs low. This type of design although inexpensive and simple to manufacture does not have sufficient strength or adjustability for modem day applications. Therefore, a need presently exists for an adjustable garment hanger that is sturdy and has positive locking adjustments, yet is very inexpensive to fabricate.